Can You Solve This? That Forgotten Netherlands Invention Which Forged our Contemporary Globe
One can find numerous contenders for the title of “world’s most significant invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The combustion motor.
As per a recent publication, however, that honor should go to a mechanised sawmill invented by Dutchman Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.
“Before mechanised sawing, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated around ten lumberjacks working over 90 days,” notes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, the same amount of cut lumber could be manufactured within seven days.”
Owing to their speedy mechanical saw, which turned logs to planks using almost no manual labor, Dutch builders could build vessels more quickly than anyone else, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial as well as cultural dominance in Europe and the world.
The First True Industrial Machine
Corneliszoon’s sawmill, argues Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A wind turbine turned a wheel. A single part transformed the rotary motion to vertical action to power the saw. Another component changed that same spinning movement into a sideway’s movement advancing the timber toward the cutter. A ratchet system moved the wood forward one precise increment each stroke.
“Every component was modest by itself. Corneliszoon’s brilliance was to combine them so the machine acted in a precisely synchronized order, cutting on every downward motion while advancing with each upward stroke. This constituted an astonishingly clever application of basic components.”
A fact that leads us to today’s puzzle. The task is you to reimagine one of the fundamental ideas underpinning this historic invention.
Round and Up
Construct a mechanism that turns rotary motion to vertical action. You have these items exclusively: A rotating disc. Two pegs. Two rods. A “guide”, which is a tube or sleeve through which a single the rods can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the parts don’t collapse.)
The solution returns at 5pm UK featuring the solution.
In the interim, NO SPOILERS. Instead, feel free to propose (non obvious) candidates for the planet’s greatest creation.
